Proceedings of the IAEA technical meeting in collaboration with NEA on specific applications of research reactors: provision of nuclear data

Research reactors (RRs) have played and continue to play a key role in the development of the peaceful uses of atomic energy. The main applications of most RRs continue to be radioisotope production, neutron beam applications, silicon doping and material irradiation for nuclear systems, as well as teaching and training for human resource development. What has been perceived as less important is the role of RRs to provide nuclear data, utilizing their inherent capability of integral experiments, benchmark, and validation analyses, particularly for the assessment of the safety margin and improvement of economic efficiency in the development and licensing of future nuclear power plants. In this respect, the previous International Conference on Nuclear Data for Science and Technology, held in Nice, France, from 22 to 27 April 2007, especially emphasized atomic and nuclear data needs for basic nuclear physics research, innovative power reactors and future fuel cycles (e.g., fast reactors, dedicated reactors for nuclear waste transmutation, accelerator driven systems, the Th-U fuel cycle, etc.), and the realization of fusion reactors (e.g., ITER). Other fields in which nuclear data are required relate to the testing of materials needed for such facilities, the evaluation of radioisotope production and their medical application, the simulation via computer software radiation of doses to patients and advanced cancer therapies, as well as the improvement of analytical techniques adopted for cultural heritage diagnostics and material composition analysis. RRs continue to occupy a visibly important place in these areas of study and application along with dedicated accelerator-based neutron sources. For example, an installation like the Lohengrin Fission Fragment Separator at Institute Laue-Langevin (ILL) in Grenoble, France, remains a unique place to study fission fragments and their properties as products of thermal neutron induced fission. Equally, the importance of integral measurements performed at RRs to validate evaluated nuclear data libraries used by neutron-gamma transport and material depletion-transmutation codes is another example where the role of RRs is primordial. RRs can also provide other important experimental information such as gamma heat and material damage. In this respect, a new initiative of the Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) Working Party on Evaluation Cooperation has been launched in order to develop methods that combine integral experimental data from RRs and various differential data to examine targeted accuracies for different reactions, isotopes and energy ranges in the interest of their effects on integral neutronic parameters used for the design of new nuclear reactors. Finally, various efforts are in progress to expand the predicting power of nuclear reaction codes for extremely unstable nuclei, where corresponding experimental data are crucial as input for the validation and further development of the reaction models associated with these codes. Some cross-section measurements for such short-lived and on-line produced radioactive target nuclei are possible only at RR facilities thanks to the high neutron fluxes available.